Bradley Manning “Person of Interest” in WikiLeaks Investigation
Bradley Manning, the U.S. Army intelligence analyst already charged with downloading classified information, had access to the military reports about the war in Afghanistan released by WikiLeaks on Sunday, according a Defense Department official. The Army is looking into whether he may have been WikiLeaks’s source. Los Angeles Times, New York Times. Newsweek’s Declassified blog reports that WikiLeaks may have had a source other than Manning, and that WikiLeaks may a collection of documents about the Iraq War “more than three times as large” as the release on Sunday.
The documents released by Wikileaks identify Afghan informants, putting their lives in danger, MSNBC reports, picking up on a story from The Times of London. Wikileaks’ founder, Julian Assange, said that documents with names of informants were intentionally not included in the release.
Guantanamo
Denis Edney, a Canadian attorney for Guantanamo detainee Omar Khadr, has released a letter that Khadr wrote to him. In the letter, Khadr wrote that “if the world sees the U.S. sentencing a child to life in prison, it might show the world how unfair and sham this process is.” Khadr, who is scheduled to be tried by military commission next month, is accused of killing a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan. He was 15 when he was arrested in 2002. Washington Post‘s Checkpoint Washington, The Gazette, The Star.
Foreign Policy argues that the government’s poor record in the tribunals that have gone forward so far, both in terms of convictions and the controversies surrounding detainees’ rights, show that the military commission system at Guantanamo is non-functional.
FBI
The “FBI Domestic Intelligence and Operations Guide,” adopted in December 2008, is drawing criticism from the ACLU and a group called Muslim Advocates. They worry that the collection and mapping of demographic information, including race and ethnicity, encourages profiling. The FBI responded that collecting the information contributes to an understanding of the potential threats in a given area, without targeting specific groups, and pointed to non-racial data that is also collected. The ACLU is requesting the records of ethnic and racial data collected in 29 states and Washington, D.C. FBI Director Robert Mueller is scheduled to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee today. CNN, AP, AP via the Los Angeles Times.
Intelligence Community
Foreign Policy explains the art behind intelligence agents deciding what information to trust, but says that effectively passing the analysis along is bigger concern.
Afghanistan
At least 25 Afghan civilians were killed when their bus hit a mine on the way to Kabul from the southwestern region of Nimruz today. In a separate incident, a roadside bomb in Oruzgan province killed three Afghan soldiers and left two others injured.
A string of suicide attacks, including one on Bagram Air Base, have raised concerns about this relatively phenomenon in Afghanistan.
The House has passed a $59 billion appropriations bill, including $37 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, in spite of renewed questions regarding the war effort since documents were released by WikiLeaks. The $59 billion matches President Obama’s request. Though the bill passed by a wide margin, opposition has increased since the last vote on a similar bill last year. The legislation will now be sent to the White House. New York Times, Washington Post, Foreign Policy‘s The Cable blog.
David Kilcullen, of the Center for a New American Security, and Ryan Crocker, who served as the U.S. ambassador to Iraq and Pakistan, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the U.S. should negotiate with insurgents in Afghanistan. “You must be negotiating from a position of strength,” Kilcullen said, according to CNN.
Many Afghans fear that if local militias are created to fight the Taliban they may eventually turn against each other, as did groups that originally fought the Soviets. The idea will only work as “part of a broader long-term stability programme,” Hekmat Karzai argues at the BBC.
Pakistan
U.S. officials continue to counter the belief, especially following the wake of the WikiLeaks release, that members of the Pakistani intelligence community help the Taliban. Officials say that Pakistani attitudes have shifted over the past 18 months and that ties have improved between the two countries. In the Wall Street Journal yesterday, Husain Haqqani, Pakistan’s ambassador to the U.S., wrote that “[w]e have paid an unprecedented price in blood and treasure over the last two years. We will not succumb to the terrorists.”
Hamid Gul, the former head of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence, told the Washington Post that accusations against him in some of the reports released by WikiLeaks are “fiction” and part of a U.S. plot.
Gen. James Mattis, President Obama’s pick to lead CENTCOM, told the Senate Armed Services Committee yesterday that he believes the leaders of the Quetta Shura and Haqqani network should be designated as terrorists.
By a vote of 38-372, the House rejected a resolution introduced by Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) and Ron Paul (R-TX) to withdraw U.S. troops from Pakistan.
Somalia
The New York Times analyzes the question of whether military aid can provide security in Somalia, and recounts the history of foreign intervention there since the 1990s. Johnnie Carson, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for Africa, has said that the recent bombing in Uganda was a “wake-up call” to countries surrounding Somalia that they are not immune from attack by al Shabaab, according to the AFP.
Soldiers’ Mental Trauma
Blake Hall, who led an Army platoon in Iraq, recounts calls he recently received from two soldiers who said they had considered killing themselves. “We soldiers have been conditioned to never, ever admit we are hurt or suffering. But dealing with the aftermath of war, when you are no longer surrounded by the men who fought with you, when you are no longer working for a chain of command that can give you feedback from a position of authority, when you are alone — is a battle that far too many of us lose,” he says at Foreign Policy‘s Best Defense blog.
News stories compiled by the staff of the Center on Law and Security
